CHAPTER 6: The Storm
"Herr Detweiler? Max Detweiler?" Clara trilled once again.
The room fell silent. Oddly enough, while the Captain did not immediately respond, his white-suited companion, a man of elfin appearance, turned in their direction. He sported a small mustache and a large bow tie.
"I'm Herr Detweiler," he replied with a pleasant smile. "And you are?"
Clara sent a puzzled glance in Maria's direction, but Maria was, if anything, even more mystified by this turn of events.
After a moment, the older woman simply shrugged, muttered something to Maria about love being blind, and said, "I'm Madame Clara Rousseau, sir. And of course," she added with a twinkle, "I believe you know this young lady."
"No," elf-Max frowned, "I'm afraid I don't. How do you do?"
He extended his hand to Maria, who was too bewildered to do anything but return his handshake.
"Maria Rainier," she said with automatic courtesy, while in the back of her mind, she briefly considered the possibility that both men were named Max Detweiler, cousins, perhaps, linked by some strange family tradition.
By now, the crowd around them had resumed its chatter. Maria concentrated on looking at nothing at all. She couldn't risk even a glance at Captain-Max, hoping to avoid any acknowledgement of their humiliating connection. But she wasn't going to be able to escape him; he turned toward the conversation and glared disapprovingly in her direction.
"Hold on." Captain-Max addressed her, "If she's Clara, and you're here with her, then where is Lily? You haven't left her all alone, have you?"
Maria wished that the floor would open beneath her and swallow her whole.
"Lily?" Clara's brow wrinkled in confusion. "Lily's in Chicago. With her little girl and her husband, the dentist. Where else would she be? And how, may I ask, do you even-" Then she peered at Captain-Max more closely. "You know, you remind me of someone – hold on, it's coming back to me, now-"
Maria choked back a noise that was part-laugh, part-sob, and said, "Clara. These gentleman – I mean – it's this gentleman, you see –"
"I thought so!" Clara announced triumphantly. "There's no need to introduce us, Maria darling. There isn't an Austrian alive who hasn't heard of Georg Von Trapp. The man who single-handedly won the war at sea for our Empire. A fine man, and a brave one." She turned to Captain-Max. "It's an honor to meet you, sir."
The Captain's face was a mask.
"You were probably barely out of nappies, Maria, darling," Clara went on happily, "when Captain von Trapp was knighted by the Emperor. Although there was a family title before that, wasn't there? Yes, I'm certain of it, because I was visiting my family in Salzburg when you came there to live, you and your lovely wife, and they always referred to her as the Baroness von Trapp, and that was before the knighthood, so – now let's see, were there any children? I can't quite recall."
Wife?
A cold hand closed around Maria's heart and tore it from her chest.
"An English girl, am I correct?" Clara rattled on. "I'm sure she was a great comfort to you after you lost your command. I remember her distinctly. As charming as she was beautiful."
"Thank you, Madame Rousseau," the Captain-Max – whatever his name was - said distantly. "You're very kind."
"Excuse me," the elf-Max broke in. "Are you the Clara Rousseau? The renowned soprano?"
Clara flushed with pleasure.
"Why, yes. I'm not often recognized any more, but of course, back in the day-"
"It's an honor to meet you," said the little man. There was a queer light in his eyes. "Tell me, Madame Rousseau, I don't suppose you've left the stage for good, have you?"
Wife?
Dizzy with shock and unable to draw a breath, Maria looked around wildly, seeking an escape, but the boisterous throng hemmed her in on every side. Clara was already deep in conversation with Herr Detweiler, so she didn't notice Maria turning away and pushing through the crowd, toward the big glass doors that led onto the terrace.
Rain lashed against the glass. Outside, dark clouds sat like a lid overhead, and across the terrace, she could see the palm trees bent nearly sideways with the force of the wind.
"Maria!" she could hear him shout behind her.
Overwhelmed by panic, Maria threw the doors open and launched herself into the storm, ignoring the complaints of the rain-splattered patrons sitting nearby. She made it halfway across the terrace before he was at her side.
"Little fool. Get back inside," he ordered. "It's not safe out here."
"I don't take orders from you, Baron Herr von Captain Detweiler-Trapp-whatever your name is."
When his fingers took her elbow, she tried to squirm away from him, but there was no escaping his grip as he nearly dragged her under the canopy that covered the main hotel entrance. There, half-sheltered from the storm, she shook loose of him at last. Rage and sorrow welled up in her chest, making her voice tremble with the effort to speak.
"You lied to me," Maria said, trying valiantly to hide the hurt that ran beneath her anger. "You are a different person entirely! And you have a wife?"
"I do not, in fact, have a wife. I had a wife, but all I have now is a late wife. She's dead." He paused before adding faintly, as though reminding himself, "It's been four years now."
Then he shook himself back to attention.
"Maria. I'm sorry," he began. "You have no idea how many times I regretted having lied to you. I had no idea that this was going to turn into-"
"It hasn't turned into anything." she sputtered. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Well, you can tell yourself that, but you're wrong. Something was happening between us. How old are you, anyway?" he said awkwardly.
"Twenty-three. What does that have to do with anything?"
"A great deal, as it happens. It's hard to explain. I'm forty-three," he winced. "I was just so tired. When I met you, I wanted nothing more than to escape. I'd made such a mess of things with all of my children -"
"All of your children?" Maria said with growing horror. "How many of them are there?"
He cleared his throat.
"Seven."
"Seven children? You are abandoning seven motherless children for a life at sea? How old are they?"
"The oldest is sixteen, and the youngest – she's five."
"Why, she's practically a lady," Maria said scornfully. "Tell me, Captain, are they all girls?"
"No, I have two sons, but-"
"Well, this is a fine way to teach them to be men, isn't it? I can see that your children are a great comfort to you!"
"Not exactly. You don't know what you're talking about, Maria. They don't want me. They despise me, in fact. A loss like this -"
"I know plenty about loss," she spat. "I never even knew my father. All I had was my mother. She was totally devoted to me, and when she died ten years ago, I lost the only real family I'll ever have. While you-" she pointed an accusing finger at him, "you are choosing to throw yours away."
The noise and tumult of the storm faded into the background as a decade's memories of devastating grief washed back over Maria. Losing her mother was, after all, a loss far greater than the end of a girlish crush on a devious sea captain who was really someone else entirely.
So she nearly missed it, the subtle shift in his demeanor as he reached the end of his patience. His eyes were ice-blue chips, his fists clenched, and he pulled himself up to his full height before launching a shot across her bow.
"Loss? Maternal devotion? Coming from you? What kind of grief-stricken widow runs off at all hours of the day and night to associate with strange men in a shady town, leaving her daughter behind? Why, half the time you forget about her altogether!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake." Despite her misery, Maria had to laugh. "Are you talking about Lily? The real Lily is older than I am. She's Clara' daughter, and she's married to a dentist in America, with a little girl of her own. I made it up. I made all of it up. The husband, the daughter, everything. I've never even-" she caught herself – "been married."
"Aha!" he crowed. "I knew it! It was all too perfect! No one who has actually been married or had a child would ever-" But then the light faded from his eyes. "-could ever. Understand."
Of course, he was right. What did she know about anything outside the walls of Nonnberg Abbey? Maria's foolish attempt to step out of herself had led only to humiliation and disappointment. Her gruff, romantic Captain was someone else entirely, someone deceitful and elegant and – what had Clara said about a title?
"I am anything but perfect, but at least I admit to who I am." Which wasn't at all true, a little voice from within reminded Maria. "While, you, Captain Sir Lord von Knighted Baron Detweiler Trapp naval hero, whose wife was a Baroness-"
"She was an English aristocrat from birth. And the title has been in my family for generations," he shrugged. "It means nothing."
Maria couldn't believe this was the same man at all. What else had he lied about?
"So you're not Italian after all."
"My mother was half Italian, but no, I actually am from Salzburg, as it happens. We have various homes elsewhere, but I'm based in Aigen."
Aigen. Salzburg's poshest district. Of course.
"I'll bet you weren't exactly self-taught, either, were you?"
"No." He had the good grace to at least pretend embarrassment. "I had tutors, growing up, and boarding school, and a few years at University before the Naval Academy, and of course the Grand Tour, but I hardly see what difference that makes."
At that moment, Maria felt her dreams of adventure begin to shrivel up and blow away like so many ashes.
Of course she had known she and her Captain would go their separate ways - hadn't she? But her dreams of adventure were like a treasure he had left in her keeping. Now she saw that their talk of her fragile hopes had probably been no more than an amusing diversion to him. A joke. What came easily to people like him were things that people like Maria should never even dare to dream of.
It turned out there wasn't really anything she could expect from herself after all, except – if she were lucky – a return to Nonnberg Abbey.
"I'm not the only one who lied," his voice brought her back. "As I recall, you were rather evasive on the question of where, exactly, in Salzburg you claimed to live. Not a very convincing performance. Where are you really from?"
"No. That part was the truth. I grew up in the mountains outside Salzburg, but now I live-"
But the words simply wouldn't leave her mouth. Because when they did, he'd never think of her the same way again. Her eyes squeezed shut, trying to summon, for one final time, the sweet memory of his dark blue gaze on her that last magical night, the surprising softness of his mouth, the solid heat of his body against hers.
But it was impossible to return to that time, to block out the storm that continued to rage around them. When Maria opened her eyes, she could see the trees whipped to the ground by the howling wind. Torrents of rain blown sideways had left her cheeks damp and tendrils of hair plastered to her forehead. The man facing her was similarly disheveled. He ran his hands through his dark hair and glared at her.
She took a deep breath and forced the words out in a rush.
"I'm-a-postulant-at-Nonnberg-Abbey-and-I'm-going-to-be-a-nun."
He wasn't angry or even shocked. He just laughed.
"Don't laugh at me."
"Well, then, don't lie to me, Maria."
"It's not a lie. I'm a postulant. A nun in training, more or less. I was sent here for the summer to be Clara's companion."
"I thought you were going to be – I don't know – a journalist? Or a teacher, or a spy. Or something like that."
"Oh. That nonsense? Nothing more than a silly game. I thought you understood that," she said, willing herself to sound like Sister Berthe, matter-of-fact and severe. "In fact, I am ready at this moment to take my vows. I'm going to be a nun."
"No, you're not. Not with that-" his eyes ran down along her body and back up to her face, before his voice dropped to a whisper, "-that mouth."
Although there was no hope of explaining it to this stranger, Maria wanted to understand it herself. "You wouldn't understand. The Abbey is where I belong. I'll - I'll be safe there."
"Safe."
He made it sound like a curse. He raised an eyebrow, and the contempt in his voice crushed any last bit of her hopes, which she felt fade away and die, along with his regard.
"Safe," he repeated. "From people like me, I suppose. I was some kind of experiment, was that it? Until - let a real man kiss you, just once, and you cover yourself back up in that – that get-up, and scurry back to your hiding place. Well, go ahead then. Give yourself up to a bunch of dried-up old women. It means nothing to me. I would not have thought you a coward."
For just a moment, she thought she heard the bruise in his voice, but his words – it means nothing to me – couldn't have been clearer.
"You are the coward," she said in a low voice. "Running away from memories."
"Are you calling me a coward?" his blue eyes blazed in his flushed face, and his roar nearly drowned out the noise of the storm. "Do you have any idea who you are talking to?"
"How could I, with all the lies you told me? You are the coward, running away from-"
"I'm not the one who ran away that night. I'm not the one running away from life. You wouldn't know courage if it pinched you on the bottom. Just look at you!" he glowered. "You're hardly more than a girl and you've already given up. At least I – I was not always a perfect husband, and God knows I am a failure as a father, but at least I gave it a shot. I lost my country. I lost my wife. And I've lost my children. But not without a fight, without trying, trying my best, for years! And I would not trade it for anything, not any of it. Certainly not for a fairy tale that lives only in my head. Even I managed to do better than that."
The Captain's words hit her like a blow. All around them, the wind howled and the relentless rain pounded and drummed on the stone terrace. There wasn't really anything left to do or say. It was too late to do anything but disappear behind the gates of Nonnberg Abbey. The whole summer had been a wasted chance and there was nothing left to redeem from it.
Unless – it was too late for her, but perhaps –
"I am not finished yet," Maria said bravely, surprising herself. "Now, about your children-"
"My children are none of your business," he said curtly.
"It's true, what you said about me," she said, her voice shaking with sadness and anger and something else she wouldn't let herself think about. "The only family I've managed is one I had to invent. But you have those children, and I've never met them, but I'm quite certain that all they want is to be loved. Please, Max. I mean – ehrm - Captain. Please, just love them. Love them all!"
Maria squared her shoulders, anticipating the onslaught of his reply, but to her surprise, his whole demeanor slumped in defeat and he was silent for a long moment. When he spoke at last, he was neither her affable Detweiler nor the imperious von Trapp, but some other man, flat and defeated.
"Don't you think I tried? I even considered remarrying for their sake, though my heart was not in it, and I did a great deal of harm to a woman who did not deserve it as a result. The problem is that they don't love me. The more I tried with them, the worse they got, until now, I barely recognize them. They've turned into a pack of animals. They've driven off eleven governesses, if you can believe it, and I cannot even manage to find a twelfth. I wrote to your precious Nonnberg Abbey, in fact, and even they couldn't help me! No, my children will be better off without me, I can assure you. They blame me, you see, for what happened."
"They couldn't possibly-" Maria said, but she knew he wasn't listening to her.
"They blame me, when in fact, I was the one who tried to save them. When Marta got sick, and then Louisa, I wanted to hire a nurse, but they would not let their mother go, and she wouldn't hear of it, either. She nursed the two of them, and then two more, and then she got sick and died. She played the hero, but she was too stupid to do it well. It wasn't my fault, none of it. It was their fault, for getting sick, for clinging to her, and it was hers for – oh, God."
Something brought him up short, as though he'd just received a shocking piece of news.
"Oh, God," he repeated.
He was utterly distracted, having departed to a place Maria couldn't reach, and she struggled to bring him back. Because there was unfinished business between them, one more thing she had to confront before she went back to Nonnberg for good.
"And another thing, Captain."
He didn't reply, he barely seemed to have heard her, so Maria raised her voice until she was very nearly shouting over the storm.
"Are you listening to me? That night on board the Edelweiss. When you gave me the - because you wanted me to- when you tried to-"
"Hm?" he said absently, dragging a hand across his face. "Oh – well. That. Of course, I was wrong. Disgracefully wrong. I misunderstood - but there was no excuse for it, and I do beg your pardon."
But Maria could see his mind was somewhere else. Although her heart was still pounding a furious rhythm and her mind raced with questions and accusations, their argument had apparently come to an abrupt end.
The Captain barely seemed to even notice as she stepped around him. There was nothing else for her to do but enter the hotel's main doors and wait for Friedrich to summon the lift and escort her back to Clara's apartment.
Maria went straight to her room, closed the door, and didn't come out again until the morning, staying silent when she heard Clara return to the apartment, when Kurt wheeled the rattling dinner trolley off the lift, when Clara and Annette in turn knocked softly on her door to ask after her.
At some point, Maria undressed and got into bed, but when sleep wouldn't come, she went to the window and threw open the shutters. Although clouds still blotted out the moon and stars, the rain had turned to a damp mist, and the air felt fresh and cool. By force of habit, she strained to see the harbor, and the twin-masted boat, before reminding herself that the captain of that vessel was a stranger to her.
She wandered restlessly around her room until her eyes fell on the Rilke volume. When she picked it up, she noticed – how had she missed it before? – that one page was bent at the corner, as though marked for frequent use.
The Song of the Widow, she read, and her heart filled with fear as she began to read, before it broke apart completely:
OoOoO
In the beginning life was good to me;
it held me warm and gave me courage.
That this is granted all while in their youth,
how could I then have known of this.
I never knew what living was-.
But suddenly it was just year on year,
no more good, no more new, no more wonderful.
Life had been torn in two right down the middle.
That was not his fault nor mine
since both of us had nothing but patience;
but death has none.
I saw him coming (how rotten he looked),
and I watched him as he took and took:
and nothing was mine.
What, then, belonged to me; was mine, my own?
Was not even this utter wretchedness
on loan to me by fate?
Fate does not only claim your happiness,
it also wants your pain back and your tears
and buys the ruin as something useless, old.
Fate was present and acquired for a nothing
every expression my face is capable of,
even to the way I walk.
The daily diminishing of me went on
and after I was emptied fate gave me up
and left me standing there, abandoned.
OoOoO
Maria's eyes burned with bitter tears. She had told a pack of childish lies about a pretend husband and child as a lark, to spare herself embarrassment, but with no real understanding of what losing a beloved spouse might actually have meant to someone like the Captain. Or Clara, for that matter. Her heart filled with guilt and shame.
What have I done? she thought despairingly. The Captain had been right: she was a coward, afraid to face and conquer her doubts about her vocation. She had put a foolish desire for adventure ahead of service to God, been ashamed of something she ought to have been proud of. Maria knew she would regret her behavior this summer for a very long time to come. At the end of the week she'd go back to Nonnberg and hope they'd let her stay. Even if it were offered to her, she wanted no second chance for adventure.
She crawled back into bed and waited for sleep to come, but the words of the widow poem haunted her still. You are not a widow, Maria reminded herself, you are not entitled to their pain, but she found herself whispering the words, making the ache her own:
"Life had been torn in two right down the middle…What, then, belonged to me; was mine, my own?"
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
What great reviews I've been getting! Thanks! I was interested (and honored) that several reviewers thought that the previous chapter was a conscious flip of my last (M-rated) story, in terms of what Georg does and doesn't know about Maria's innocent or not-so-innocent past. But it wasn't intentional, this story actually was well-formed in my mind before that story was. It's fun to think about what might have happened had she stayed on that boat longer. Maybe I should write an alternate version.
I had a blast writing this chapter, as you might imagine. I was so worried that the nature of the cliffhanger at the beginning wouldn't be clear, with two Maxes, but I guess it was. I hope you liked it, and also I hope you will leave me a review and tell me so!
I don't own anything about TSOM.